Mifan Mama Charity Fundraiser Cookbook

Getting on for a year ago, I was asked by Mifan Mama to contribute food and wine pairings for their (then) forthcoming charity fundraiser ‘Secrets of Dot’s Kitchen’ Cookbook

This from Mifan Mama’s website.

A couple of our volunteers Dot Jenkinson and Julie Garrett have been busy putting together a cookbook named ‘Secrets from Dot’s Kitchen’. With quite a few years of experience under Dot’s belt, she was able to adapt easily to the compact size of her Shanghai kitchen and one of those silly little ovens.

As a former chef, Dot’s experiences has taken her from private kitchens, luxury private hospital kitchens, university and did we mention cooking for up to 1,000 men in a field during her days as a British Army cook.

Both of them would like to express their sincere gratitude to their book sponsors, Sevcon, whose kind support has made the publication of this book possible. It has been put to help raise funds for Shining Star (our home for visually impaired orphans in Qingpu) and sustain the life changes offered to them.

The book which styles itself on some simple (and other ambitious) gastronomic delights that can achieved in Shanghai Kitchens (often notable for their diminutive size).

Mifan Mama was founded in 2009 by Julie and Tony Martens and four expatriate women living in Shanghai. All of whom have the drive, compassionand motivation to help Chinese orphans. Their main mission was to better the life of orphans in Anhui by assisting with basic food supplies, medical and educational needs. Since then their support has extended across China to many orphanages and thousands of children.

The name ‘MiFan MaMa’ was chosen because ‘MiFan’ means ‘rice’ and ‘Ma Ma’ is the appropriate term for ‘mother’ here in China, where we reside.

William Faulkner once said, “The man who removes a mountain, begins by carrying away small stones.”

Day by day, week by week, month by month, we work to remove the stones that bear down on these children. Through your continued support we strive to keep this vision alive.

We attended the book launch at The Intercontinental Hotel in Pudong (who were one of the Sponsors). I put together a selection of our lovely wines in an attempt to compliment the ‘locally interpreted’ canapes supplied by the hotel for the Volunteers, contributors and co-sponsors present.

That was fun; blind food matching! Most of the canapes turned out to be the sweetly flavoured oriental versions of western pastries. Laugh, I nearly cried. Not easy to drink dry white wine with sweet pies or dumplings.

Still, the pizza interpretation worked well with the Italian Barbera D’Asti DOCG.